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RELENTLESS MELT is set in Boston in1909 and is the author's third novel. Like its predecessors, it is genre-fluid, here mixing solid historical, amateur private-eye, horror, and a serving of terror. It is also gender fluid, at least as far as it concerns the main character, Artie Quick, a saleswoman at Filene's already popular Basement, where items that have not sold well upstairs are offered at constantly reducing prices until they do. Artie is seventeen and has been working full-time at Filene's for a year.
Artie does not hate her job; she'd really like to be working upstairs in the main store where she would be surrounded by merchandise in pristine condition and customers to match. But she decidedly wants more out of life than Filene's Basement can offer a working-class girl with little education. Since she works a fifty-hour week, her only option is night class and she opts for one in Criminal Investigation, offered at the YMCA and intended for future policemen. In order to pass as a young man, she has adopted a stratagem used by a long line of women before her who wanted to enter areas closed to their sex.
She's bobbed her hair and altered her absent brother Zeb's old suit to wear to class. Whether she will make this a life-long practice will later be revealed. For now, her instructor, Professor Winchell, spots the deception right away, but makes no objection to her continuing to attend the class.
She is aided in all this by her friend Theodore, who comes from a more privileged social class. But despite the comforts of his situation, he is, like Artie, feeling that he needs more out of life than he is getting. He too is taking a course - at the School of Magic, where he hopes to learn the art of casting spells from a stage magician named Gannett. He is not progressing as swiftly as he had hoped. He is, however, happy to help Artie in her studies and suggests they both investigate a recent mystery - a "sustained, distressed, wordless scream" had been heard on Boston Common on a recent evening and was still unexplained. The two have little to go on, but from here we both figuratively and literally follow them more and more deeply to a place where they are in mortal danger and must act to save their own lives, the security of Boston itself, and perhaps all of humanity.
In short, the narrative moves confidently from a convincing representation of Boston in the early years of the last century to a climax involving a confrontation with a terrifying paranormal presence. Along the way, Artie and Theodore are confronted by evidence of truly horrifying crimes involving the abduction of girls, crimes in which both police and elected officials appear to be complicit.
Bushnell is able to conduct the reader on the journey from the ordinary to the extraordinary through the voice of the narrator. This is the calm, not quite detached commentary that we all recognize as the voice-over of a solid film documentary. It is the attitude if not the accent of a classic BBC informative film and it encourages readers to accept what might otherwise be seen as an unwise foray into an improbable universe.
But RELENTLESS MELT also derives in a way from still photography as well. Drawn from Susan Sontag's On Photography and used as an epigraph, it reminds us that the moment in time frozen in a photo does not negate the relentless melt of time itself. What is true of a photo is also true of this novel. Within the solid ordinariness of the opening chapters there are seeds of change, though not necessarily of the change the characters (or the reader) anticipate. Like the narrator, readers will develop a soft spot for the several Arties we meet in the course of the book and wish them well. This is not to suggest that this is intended as the first book in a series. It could be, and I would certainly read the sequel, but a series is a confinement of sorts. As it stands, RELENTLESS MELT is the most inventive, appealing, and entertaining piece of fiction I've read in some time and that is good enough for now.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, June 2023
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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